Don't Make It Harder Than It Has to Be: Rethinking My New Year's Goals

I pride myself on being something of an expert in goal-setting. I get paid to give motivational talks on goal-setting. You might even call me the queen of goal-setting.

But I'm here to confess that my goals for 2020 have been a dismal failure so far. 

It's now halfway through January, and my health-enhancing goals haven't made me appreciably healthier. If anything I'm more worn and weary than I was before. As I wrote in my previous post, my very stress-reducing strategies have been stressing me out.

I had forgotten one of my own cardinal principles: DON'T MAKE IT HARDER THAN IT HAS TO BE! Why did I choose daunting health-enhancing activities when less inimatidating ones are available? And why on earth did I try to do everything at once??

I've quoted before from Arnold Bennett's wonderful little book, first published in 1910, How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day. He speaks to exactly this issue in his usual brisk, no-nonsense style:

Let me principally warn you against your own ardour. . . . Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own.

A failure or so, in itself, would not matter, if it did not incur a loss of self-esteem and of self-confidence. But just as nothing succeeds like success, so nothing fails like failure. Most people who are ruined are ruined by attempting too much. Therefore, in setting out on the immense enterprise of living fully and comfortably within the narrow limits of twenty-four hours a day, let us avoid at any cost the risk of an early failure. I will not agree that . . . a glorious failure is better than a petty success. I am all for the petty success. A glorious failure leads to nothing; a petty success may lead to a success that is not petty.

Oh, Arnold, how wise you are!

So here are some of my petty successes so far and other potential petty successes I'm going to focus on for now.

My best success took ten seconds and improved my life enormously: deleting the Twitter app on my phone. It has not only freed me from painful self-doubt and despair from the contents of what I was reading, but saved me HOURS of endless, mindless, miserable scrolling. I've read six boks already this year, all from the time gained from this one ten-second life-hack. HUGE IMPROVEMENT IN MY EMOTIONAL HEALTH.

My second-best success came as the result of my last post, after I shared it on Facebook (which is why I can't bring myself to delete my Facebook app). When I bewailed lack of time for meditation, several friends suggested the Insight Timer app, where I can do a five-minute guided meditation right at home while lying on my bed. Those five minutes, or ten minutes, a day have been a huge gift to myself. HUGE IMPROVEMENT IN MY SPIRITUAL HEALTH. 

As my favorite successes are the one-and-done ones, rather the ones I have to force myself to do every single day for the rest of of my life, I arranged to have my carpets cleaned. It's going to happen on Friday. I can't wait! MODERATE IMPROVEMENT IN MY EMOTIONAL HEALTH.I had a consultation with a financial planner, which was sobering, but will allow me to make some further one-and-done decisions that will simplify my finances. MODERATE IMPROVEMENT IN MY FINANCIAL HEALTH.

For my physical health, hmmm. Maybe I'll go to the grocery store and buy some vegetables and fruits, on the theory that I'll eat more of these if I actually have some in the house. Maybe I'll take a kind yoga-teacher friend up on her mega-generous offer to come to my house and show me some yoga exercises that even I can do. 

For my environmental health, I returned library books today on foot rather than by car. 

For my social health, I'll contact three friends today to set up outings for next week. Ooh!

I'm not going to focus on the whole darned year right now. I'm going to remember another piece of wisdom I cling to, from William Law: "Be intent upon the perfection of the present day." Maybe each day I'll ask myself: "What petty success can I have (on any goal whatsoever) today?" 

Yay for petty success!